"Here on the west coast of America, where millions upon millions of dollars have been spent promoting Beckham as the superstar saviour of soccer, the decision to omit him from the England squad was recorded by a single paragraph in USA Today."

because of we really, really needed league tables from every national football league plotted on a Google Map of Europe… BATE Borisov top the table in Belarus!

… like BBC coverage of the African Cup of Nations on Channel 302.

"[L]ast month the Information Commissioner ruled in favour of the fans and ordered the Government to disclose the information being sought."

"The NCAA issued new rules this week that will allow credentialed press to blog live NCAA championship sporting events. The rules, however, limit the number of times reporters can post live blogs depending on the sport they cover." (via Guardian/PDA)

"US sports cable network ESPN is ‘absolutely interested’ in buying the UK rights to broadcast Premier League football"

"The High Court is considering whether a pub should be allowed to show live English Premier League football matches from foreign broadcasts."

Ha: "several overweight, 40-something hacks secured an emphatic 8-2 victory against students from Cardiff University’s School of Journalism. The students denied they had "thrown" the game amid fears their journalistic careers may be over before they even

"The wisdom of crowds has come to English football. Myfootballclub’s takeover of Ebbsfleet means 20,000 people will vote on its team selection; Hapoel Kiryat Shalom in Israel do a similar thing."

"Tim Ireland’s Bloggerheads site is currently down after his webhost pulled the plug. … " following allegations made by Craig Murray about Alisher Usmanov.

Times reveals using FOI: "More than 300 top-flight footballers are avoiding millions of pounds of income tax by using loopholes that Gordon Brown pledged to close more than a decade ago."

American football has joined the long list of sports leagues with rules restricting sports reporting in order to protect exclusive broadcast rights. Rafat Ali has some funny video showing the effects.

The SJA blog links the NCAA’s blogging ban to similar efforts in football and rugby

"[Jonathan] Pearce who literally had hold of [Didier] Drogba in what was almost a WWE-style headlock. He got his interview, but Drogba could say nothing of interest."